


Gauntlet

by bonebo



Category: Homestuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-14
Updated: 2013-06-14
Packaged: 2017-12-14 23:39:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/842764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonebo/pseuds/bonebo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd chosen wrong before, heard the dying screams of the young and dealt with the crushing sense of failure as another fragile life was snuffed out.</p><p>But this time he will do better.</p><p> </p>
            </blockquote>





	Gauntlet

The trolls were always skittish, on their first emergence from the caves.

They clambered out on unsteady, thick legs--a few of the weaker ones still retained the crawling habit of wrigglerhood, too frightened or unstable to realize how the single action made their chances of being matched up plummet--with their bodies still slick with pupation fluid and skin tinged lightly with whatever hue their blood had been given. Their eyes were glassy and wide, uncertain under the fog of continued development, flicking around the scattering of lusii near the cave’s mouth with a need ingrained by centuries of danger.

They had to be fast--because there were always more trolls than lusii, and as soon as night fell the caves became a hunting ground.

As soon as a small group of the younglings had emerged, they took confidence from their numbers and stopped huddling against the walls of the cave. Slowly they began to integrate, walking in pairs or trios toward the lusii, searching--for a connection, for a feeling of security.

For their guardian.

It was not the seahorse’s first visit to the underground. In his first attempts at picking a troll, he had been nervous, just as worried as the trolls themselves were; he had slunk in the back of the group and watched as the strongest and quickest were paired off and taken away, and had been among the last of the lusii to pick, choosing from the injured and the slow and the mutated. He’d picked a rustblood with a deformed, bulging abdomen that made a weak sense of pity rush over him, and two weeks later he’d listened to the thing scream and shriek as it died. He’d dealt with the body and vowed that next time he would do better.

The past selections played through his mind as the seahorse moved forward, drifting through the lusii to head to the front of the pack. He glanced over the trolls as they passed him, searching and scanning, waiting for that sense of pity to entrap him again.

A dull pain in his side made the seahorse glance down, and he blinked at a violet-tinged troll who lay sprawled under him, apparently having bumped into him by mistake. He watched as the troll moved small, chubby hands away from its face, peering up at him cautiously through messy black hair already stabbed through with the tiniest nubs of growing horns. The troll’s eyes were wide and foggy, shocked into silence as he stared dumbly up at the lusus, and in that one moment that their gazes connected the seahorse felt a wave of pity crash over him strong enough to make him tremble. 

He leaned down slowly, not wanting to frighten the little thing further, and pressed the tip of his muzzle to the troll’s bare chest; he breathed out slowly, breath snuffling warm under the troll’s chin, and in response the thing grabbed the sides of his head and clung to him, a quiet whimper spilling from his throat.

The seahorse blinked, oddly okay with this new turn of events. He slowly lifted his head, holding the troll dangling in the air for just a moment before turning to gently drop it on his back. He waited until the thing had a clinging hold on his smooth neck, then slowly set off, heading back through the other lusii with an odd sense of warm pride swelling in his keel. 

This time, he’d chosen well.

He would not endure another failure.


End file.
